Festivals

There are so many things to love about a country that officially (and equally) recognizes the world’s four major religions. My favorite aspect is that there always seems to be a festival somewhere on the island to attend!

First, I got to experience Hari Raya, which celebrates the end of Ramadan. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures to share from the event, which is really too bad because some of the clothing I saw was absolutely gorgeous—kind of makes me wish Christians celebrated holidays in more festive clothes! I was told the best place to go was Geylang, which is a part of Singapore I hadn’t been to yet, so I was pretty eager to check it out.

The crowds were thick. Beyond thick. I had even more trouble than usual navigating Dagny’s stroller… and it wasn’t just the thousands of people that made it difficult, but the stages, food stands, and vendor carts that covered the sidewalks and spilled into the streets.

Most of the festivities had actually died down by the time I got there (they started sometime during the night), but I was still surprised to see so many people out and about, looking both happy and sleepy. Dagny and I received a lot of stares… we were the only Caucasians I spotted in Geylang all afternoon. Which is why I didn’t take any pictures. I love getting to be a part of different religions for a day, and as much as I want to catalog what I see with my camera, I don’t want anyone from that particular faith or nationality to think I’m taking pictures because I think their way of life is bazaar. Hopefully that makes sense.

Anyway, everyone was wonderfully pleasant and loved Dagny—especially the young Muslim men, which surprised me since I don’t know too many guys in their late teens or early twenties back home who would make such a huge fuss over a toddler.

I stuck around Hari Raya only for a couple of hours, until I got sick of lugging the stroller up and down stairs and in and out of careening traffic. I’m glad I got to see a small slice of Muslim life, though!

For the past couple of weeks, Singapore has been celebrating its Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the Moon Festival). It’s a popular lunar harvest festival celebrated by the Chinese.

To kick off the celebrations, I bought a pack of moon cakes—the official food of the Mid-Autumn Festival. I had a choice of either red bean or jade (there are many more flavors to choose from, but the stand I went to only had these two on hand). Red beans here aren’t like red beans back in the States… they’re sweet. But I was more interested to know what jade tasted like. The reason is kind of funny: when I was a kid, my mom had a jade plant that I was obsessed with. When she wasn’t looking, I would occasionally pluck one of the plump leaves (sorry, Mom) and take it to my “sidewalk apothecary,” where I would mix it into concoctions with dandelion milk and smashed crabapples. I wasn’t dumb enough to ever taste what I made, but seeing that people actually do eat jade plants here made me very, very curious!

A picture of my jade moon cakes. While I was chewing it, I thought it was so-so. Then the aftertaste kicked in... it just kept filling my mouth with more and more pungency. I guess jade's not really for me.

Next up for the Mid-Autumn Festival was attending the Lantern Festivals in Clarke Quay and Chinatown. Both were very different, and tons of fun. First was Clarke Quay… I used to wonder why “happy hour” drink specials were so early, and subsequently who in the world ever went out for drinks and dinner while it was still light out. Now I know. It’s people with toddlers, and yes, we absolutely deserve a deal on drinks by five o’clock in the evening. So while Brad and I enjoyed “happy hour” wine at the Vintry (al fresco, of course), Dagny played in the splash fountains right beside us. It was fantastic! A built-in aquatic babysitter so mom and dad could actually relax and talk for a little bit. And I’m beginning to think Dagny remembers Roxy more clearly than I probably give her credit for… she loves chasing after balls we throw into the fountains for her, and carries them back to us in her mouth. We always make sure to rub her tummy and toss her a treat!

Bridge in Clarke Quay decorated for the festival.

Lanterns by day. Very detailed!

One of the food stands set up along the river.

We ate on the go, sampling Mongolian, Hokkien, and Taiwanese food at different vendor stands set up along the river. And I had a blast buying trinkety stuff for my nieces and nephews. When darkness finally fell, we watched all the lanterns blaze to life, and it was truly remarkable!

This lantern received first prize in a contest. I was clapping and cheering because it was made with Coke cans, and my family has a long history in the Coca-Cola business!

Second place lantern. Also very cool.

Lanterns by night.

A couple of cute kids who wandered into my picture.

I'm impressed.

All up and down the river are lighted floats. Now I know where the term "parade float" comes from!

 

Dagny was handed a balloon with an LED light in it. That kept her entertained for the evening!

This year is the Year of the Rabbit. Next year: The Dragon!

The only picture of Brad and I from the evening. We didn't realize until we got home that it looks like we're entering the Inferno... oh well.

I commented to Brad, "It looks like we're entering the tunnel of love!" And not two seconds later, some guy comes up to Dagny and plants a huge kiss on her mouth—a grown man, not another cute little toddler. I thought Brad was going to deck the guy.

I've seen this guy a few times around Singapore now! He dances to drum music and swings these ropes of wooden beads around his body... some of them are close to 15-feet long!

The Chinatown Lantern Festival was a lot more crowded… or maybe it just felt that way since the streets are so narrow. I bought some more fun and funky Asian stuff for the nieces and nephews while one Chinese person after the next stopped to have their picture taken with Dagny. She attracted even more attention than usual that night… I bought her some new sandals at Carrefour that afternoon, and didn’t realize until we got to Chinatown and she jumped out of her stroller that they squeak like puppy chew toys when she walks. And boy, do they squeak loud. And boy, does she LOVE it! Bounce, bounce, bounce… squeak, squeak, squeak. While everyone else was laughing, I was digging in my purse for some Advil.

Entering Chinatown off the MRT. I felt like I was entering Disney World!

These lanterns were all painted by local school children.

Again, we went to the festival early, and left right after the lanterns were lit, when the sidewalks became almost too jammed to move. The food there was amazing! I absolutely DEVOURED a plate of Singapore street noodles, also called kway teow. 

Kway teow.

Singapore's own Tiger Beer. It's actually pretty cheap in Chinatown!

Dags hanging out with the hostess. There are ENORMOUS live black crabs in those cages behind her. Not pictured: aquariums of live bullfrogs, bigger than Brad's hand... choose your own and they'll prepare it for you.

The kway teow was some of the best Asian food I’ve had yet… though it’s difficult to really say for sure, since I’ve tried a lot of wonderful stuff that can’t necessarily be compared. Like last weekend, I went to Newton Hawker Center and made an absolute pig of myself on barbeque stingray (gotta watch out for an abundant amount of cartilage when eating these), mammoth crayfish and even bigger garlic prawns (literally the size of lobsters!), an entire plate of carrot cake (which is like a casserole and, funny enough, has NO carrots in it… it’s made with fried radishes and rice), steamed kai lan in sambol chile (very spicy, a little like spinach in texture and taste… and yes, Brad and I had a good laugh over the fact that we were eating “Kai Lan,” Dagny’s favorite Asian cartoon character), and finished it all off with a bowl of shaved ice topped with black jelly (looks like licorice Jell-O, but doesn’t taste like much of anything… just really sweet) and a kind of palm fruit (about the size of a grape, all white, also sweet… if you have issues with texture, you might want to avoid this one… kind of like trying to eat an eyeball, though much more delicious). So that was a bit of a sidetrack there, basically just to point out that there are A LOT of different things to try here, and most of them are fantastic.

Up next (and hopefully in just a few days, if I find the time): Dagny's and my ADVENTURE WEDNESDAYS!!!

A Weekend Getaway

The week started out a little rough. I’ve only been sick once since having Dagny—a bout of food poisoning in Charlotte that hit both me and Brad like a truck (I don’t think there’s any other way for food poisoning to hit a person). Fortunately, our part-angel neighbor watched Dagny for us while we screamed our final farewells to each other from two different bathrooms in our house, certain we were going to die. (We obviously didn't) But this week started out a little too similarly for my liking, with a stomach bug and no God-sent neighbor to pawn my daughter off on. Aaaand Brad was in China for the week. Of course.

But we made it through! The weather worked in my favor for two of the days… it poured rain, so Dagny didn’t experience her usual urge to play outside. And the cable company seemed to be on my side for those two days as well, airing a Tom & Jerry marathon that kept Dags glued to the TV. I’m convinced those doctors who say children shouldn’t watch any television before the age of five don’t have any children of their own. I don’t know what I would have done without Tom and Jerry. I have half a mind to name my future children after them.

Okay, so my week wasn’t exactly fun, and like I said, Brad was in China for five days. I don’t think there’s a person out there who returns from a business trip to China saying, “Wow, that was fantastic! The smog in Shanghai was so revitalizing!” That said, we decided we were due for a long weekend getaway in Bintan, an Indonesian island with gorgeous white sand beaches. We were told it’s Indonesia's family-friendly version of Bali.

The weekend starts out with a ferry trip to the island (another reason it’s such a popular destination here… you don’t need to fly!). I was a little nervous as we approached the boat, what with the crew lining the gangplank so my baby and I don’t get pitched into the bay while the ferry rocks violently side to side in front of me. I’m not much of a water person. Or a roller coaster person. I’m not even a big fan of turning around too fast. This was going to be interesting.

For the most part, the ride was fine. And it was pretty cool heading out of Singapore, passing between freight ships that were like floating cities towering above us. It was only a 55-minute trip to Bintan, and the water there was sheltered and calm compared to the port we left.

Following a bumpy, windy bus ride (I’m imagining a margarita and a couple of Advil waiting for me at check-in by this point) we arrived at Bintan Lagoon Resort! We were greeted at the lobby entrance by Indonesian dancers and drummers.

We wanted to get a picture of Dagny with the dancers, but she was a little freaked out (can you tell?). I suggested Brad sit with her on his lap. I don't think the words were entirely out of my mouth before he was eagerly plopping himself down between these two! Way to take one for the team.

Bintan Lagoon Resort. Not too shabby.

Our room. Dagny LOVED the couch/guest bed in the corner, and turned it into her own gymnastics mat.

The view from our balcony. When your daughter sacks out at 7:00pm, you realize balconies with nice views are an absolute MUST on vacation.

Dinner our first night was a lot of fun. We attended a buffet with seemingly endless amounts of Indonesian and Asian food, but it was set up a little differently than buffets in the States. In the center of our table was a heating element with a large bowl of spicy soup broth on top of it. The soup is kept at a rolling boil, and you pick raw and uncooked items from the buffet and cook them to your liking at your own table. Most cooking is done this way here, where all the food is cooked in one giant pot. Well, Brad and I had a blast playing chef! I think it’s best to approach meals like this the same way you would approach a Play-Dough kitchen as a child… you just have to give yourself over to being adventurous and view it as a great big vat of experimental fun! There was a lot of stuff to choose from (whole eggs, prawns, noodles, fish balls, crab legs, anchovies, fish strips… the list goes on), most of which was delicious but some of it was a fight to swallow. I think the highlight of our dinner was watching Dagny try chopsticks for the first time, entirely of her own will. Actually, it was just a chopstick (singular), which she stabbed at her food with, and when none of it stuck, she molded her rice in a ball around the end and stuck it in her mouth. I wish I had a picture of the pensive look on that little one’s face as she tried to make sense of it all!

Another difference between restaurants in Asia and the US is how loud the atmosphere is here. Meals in Asia are typically large family events and are far from formal. For the most part, people are seated at round tables to make conversation easier. And there is no need to feel self-conscious at any point during your meal—even if you’re making a mess with your chopsticks, sweat’s dripping off your face because most restaurants are open-air and the majority of the food is incredibly spicy, and your place setting and lap are covered in prawn and crab shells—just take a deep breath and look around you… and you’ll find most tables are a bit of a mess, and no one really cares. And the locals understand their way of life is different and a little difficult for Westerners, so you’ll find they give you a lot of credit and encouraging smiles just for trying their food, using their chopsticks, and saying “Hello” and “Thank you” in Chinese.

Now, besides most meals only coming with a set of chopsticks and a porcelain spoon, I’ve found shellfish a bit of a challenge to eat here—they all arrive with their shell on (yes, even fried prawns, which sort of makes me wonder what the point of all the delicious batter is if I just have to peel it off?). I find I eat a lot less here than at home, because it takes me quite a while to actually get my food in my mouth! What still blows my mind to this day is to watch locals put a crab claw or entire prawn in their mouth, chew it up with teeth that must be part iron, and then spit out the little pieces of shell. I’m not that hardcore yet.

Most of our second day was spent at the pool and the beach. The pool had a swim-up bar… need I explain further? Kinda funny: I ordered a margarita, and had to explain to the bartender how to make it. He didn’t have any margarita mix, so he used fresh squeezed limejuice (yummy!) and finished it off with a splash of vodka. Ummm, okaaay. It was actually pretty good, and I’m still surprised I didn’t fall off my stool and drown in the water once I finished it.

Who's that sexy chick?

Dagny made friends with these two girls at the pool. They were so cute together! A fantastic lesson that friendship can transcend language barriers (since these girls only knew Chinese and Dagny only knows baby Venutian). They played for over an hour, and put flowers in her hair (and my hair, too).

Beaches here (in both Indonesia and Singapore) amaze me… they are completely empty during the day! Asians tend to think Americans are a little nutty for wanting to sit out in the excruciating heat while toasting their skin a gorgeous shade of cancer.

After a fun day of playing in the pool and on the sand, this one is all tired out.

Aaaand... about two minutes later on the way back to the room.

Following a brief nap, Dagny was ready for an extended evening on the beach. There was a little "party" our hotel was hosting on the sand, with a DJ and fire dancers. We got a nice spot right by the water. Yeah, that's a sippy cup of milk in the picture... this is how we roll.

Dags LOVED the beach party! At one point she stood up and started dancing, which is basically just deep knee bends and arm waving. Brad and I call it the "Hot Potato In My Diaper" dance.

View of the ocean.

This is the life.

"OMGoodness gracious! That guy should NOT be wearing a Speedo, Mommy!"

After three gorgeous days on Bintan, it was time to go home. And we were all ready. When you're advised not to drink from the taps, it turns out you can be charged ridiculous amounts of money for bottled water ($10/bottle, in fact). After a few days, staying hydrated starts to break the bank!

All "funned" out. 

The Monkey Wants My Baby

This week’s post begins with a correction and a confession. First, the correction: In my last post, I mentioned Dagny and I like to visit the coy ponds in the morning. Oops. They are actually koi ponds, filled with koi fish—not modestly shy water. And now, my confession: I have most likely misspelled and will continue to misspell a lot of words in my entries. I’ve never been a particularly good speller to begin with, and let’s face it, very few things I hear during the day are written down for me. I’m working with a very wide, strictly phonetic net here. There have been times I have asked (usually for blogging purposes) how something is spelled (like ohta), but even that doesn’t always deliver stellar results. For instance, just last week I made my first ever trip to the dry cleaner… it was located in the apartment complex across the street from us, hidden somewhere in a labyrinth of buildings and walkways (the complex is monstrous). On my way in, I asked the guard at the gate where I needed to go…

“Towa jkhay,” he says.

“Tower J?” I ask.

“Jkhay.”

“Tower K?”

“Jkhay.”

Oh heavens, we’re getting nowhere—and fast. Then an idea hits me. “Tower J, as in…" But I cannot, in that moment, think of a SINGLE word that starts with the letter J. Believe it or not, my brain (which I’m convinced likes to play very cruel games with the rest of me) starts screaming, “Jabberwocky! I dare you to say Jabberwocky!”

Finally, after a moment of awkward silence, I finally say (with copious amounts of relief and pride), “Jakarta!” Go me. Everyone here knows Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. “Okay, J as in Jakarta, or K, as in…” Oh, you must be kidding me. K… K… K… “The, um, middle… letter… in Jakarta.”

And now you know why my spelling stinks, and why I probably won’t do a darn thing to remedy it at this point.

This week (though I guess by now, it was last week) was kicked off with the Hungry Ghost Festival. This week, according to Taoist and Buddhist beliefs, the gates of Heaven and Hell are opened, and the deceased return to earth to walk amongst us. Queue the creepy music from The Twilight Zone. Being a total Halloween nut and lover of ghost stories (NOT horror stories!), this festival immediately caught my interest.

Heading out of our apartment Monday morning, I’m hit with the rich smell of incensed smoke, and a thick haze that has nothing to do with the humidity (for once) saturates the air. All up and down our street, people are tossing burning stacks of Heaven and Hell money into metal drums, and are planting glowing joss sticks in the ground. Wax from burning candles streaks the sidewalks, and several times I see paper replicas of everyday items go bouncing down the street gutters, engulfed in flames, like scary tumbleweeds from an old Western. Kudos to you if you remember my trip to funeral row, where I got to see the making and selling of these paper items. The week of the Ghost Festival must be similar in scope to America’s Black Friday for those vendors.

Also, all along the sidewalks and in the parks, prayer and offering tents have been set up. The reason everyone is burning money, laying out food, and praying is to keep the wandering spirits appeased, so they (especially the ones from Hell) will return happy to their realms at the end of the lunar cycle. If the gates close while the spirits are still wandering in search of food and money (and apparently a little respect), they will be trapped on earth as ghosts, until next year’s festival.

Melted wax and ashes covering the sidewalks.

Hell money and paper replicas that can be purchased for the Ghost Festival.

Offering tables similar to these can be found all over the city... pictured here are candles, joss sticks, and plates of food (mostly vegetarian).

I recently bought myself a Singapore cookbook. Every morning, Brad and I pick out what we are going to attempt to cook that night, and then I head to the wet market and grocery store, and we all three get adventurous. We set up assembly (or disassembly) lines in the kitchen… Brad’s really good at popping heads off prawns, which is nice, because I hate doing it. I get kind of gaggy when the brains burst all over my hands in a brown gooey mess. But I’m really good at removing the mud vein. While here, I learned how to use a wood skewer to slide them out with ease, without having to slice the prawn open (or “butterfly” them, which is the “lazier” approach). Believe it or not, the cooking has been going pretty well! Several times I’ve had to Google an ingredient, having no idea if it’s a fruit, vegetable, spice, or something that used to breathe and walk, but all in all, the results have been amazingly good. And healthy! And, most surprising of all, increasingly vegetarian. Gasp!

Every time I go to the wet market, I learn something new. This week, I realized I can use my cuter-than-cupid daughter to my advantage. All I have to do is take her out of her stroller, put on her little monkey backpack with the long tail that clips to my shorts, and… Bam! I no longer have to seek out the vendors… they come to us! That’s right, Dagny giggles and blows kisses and waves to all the elderly Chinese folks, and I immediately find people offering me great deals on veggies, and free bags of peanuts and tea biscuits. Is it wrong to be exploiting my daughter this way??? I kind of think no, because she has an amazing way of making everyone she meets deliriously happy. She doesn’t care how old anyone is, what their nationality is, or whether they can walk or are restricted to a wheelchair. She loves, hugs, high-fives, and blows kisses to everyone she meets. This week, she approached an old woman who was hobbling with a cane, took her free hand, and started walking through the aisles of the market with her. The woman was just beside herself. She couldn’t speak English, but kept stroking Dagny’s arms and kissing the top of her head. And then she led us to a stand run by a friend of hers, who gave us over a pound of fresh prawns for only $6. Thank you, Dags! Dagny actually does this kind of thing a lot… takes the hands of random people and babbles to them for a little while, then blows them a kiss with a big “Mmwaah,” and is on her way again, off to entertain someone new.

Dagny working the wet market.

This week, we finally decided it was time to lease a car. Brad’s new business facility is on the north end of the island, and takes an hour and a half to get to by train—or else is a $30 cab ride each way. The car makes things a lot easier for him. And as for me, during one of my most recent cab rides, my driver had to slam on his brakes four times, kissed one bumper, and ran two VERY red lights! All this with Dagny wrapped in my arms, seated on my lap. After that, I was ready for a car, too… but I warned Brad I don’t ever want to actually drive it. I’m not ready to attempt driving on the opposite side of the car, on the opposite side of the road, in a country where even the locals openly admit they are among the worst drivers in the world.

Brad's first day of driving. Proof positive I'm a total dork, since I felt the need to mark the moment on film.

"Mom, Dad? Why is everything backward? Can't we just take the train?"

I also splurged for a bike this week, so now I can take Dagny to the beach more easily… just a quick, ten-minute ride on my bright purple jalopy. Yes, jalopy… or whatever the equivalent word would be for a bike. Even though this bike is brand spankin’ new, it sounds and rolls like the bike from the movie “Friday.” It creaks, clatters, and whenever I need to shift gears (which thankfully isn’t very often, since Singapore is pretty flat) I have to get off the bike and manually adjust the chain. But this isn’t really a big deal, since I have to stop about every twenty minutes anyway to re-raise the seat. Want to know what kind of a bike $100 gets you? A big piece-o-crap, that’s what.

Here’s a picture of Dagny in her new bike seat. I think she looks like one of the mushroom guys from Super Mario Brothers.

With our new car, we took our first family trip to the zoo this weekend. The Singapore Zoo is touted as one of the finest in the world, and now that I’ve seen it—or maybe experienced it is more accurate—I have to agree. We bought a year pass, which was a good thing because after spending almost four hours there, we only saw about twenty percent of the exhibits.

This. Zoo. ROCKS!!!!

We spent most of our time exploring the primate enclosures. Now this just blew me away… the monkeys are “free range!” This means they swing in the trees over your head and drop onto the park signs beside you, staring with amazingly human eyes as you walk past. Dagny was in heaven, giggling and pointing at all the monkeys as we walked through. Some were pocket-sized, and even the toughest-looking visitor couldn’t look at them without saying “Awww,” while others were obviously quite large (like the orangutans and chimps).

Along one of the paths, I let Dagny out of her stroller (with her monkey backpack on) and let her walk for a bit. Suddenly, a small clump of visitors in front of me start pointing and yelling something in Chinese. I immediately tense, because they are gesturing at something over my head and behind me. And then, two seconds later, a feisty little monkey comes flying off a pavilion rooftop and smacks me square on the head with a tree branch. The other visitors, who all have their cameras out, think this is fantastic… something tells me I’m going to appear in several home video viewings this week.

But the best part is that the monkey won’t leave us alone. He (or she?) is fixated on Dagny. I don’t know if it was the monkey backpack she was wearing, or if maybe her cuteness transcends species, but it followed her down the path and into a picnic pavilion. Its eyes darted between me and her, and it occasionally reached a paw (or hand? My dad and I are in disagreement on this) toward her, never aggressively, but with such affectionately wide and wondering eyes that one of the visitors says to me, “The monkey wants your baby.”

Dags with her monkey backpack on.

Just moments before the "monkey attack."

Inside the picnic pavilion... this is the little guy who follows Dagny around for about ten minutes, and won't take his eyes off her.

He occasionally reaches out a hand and tries to climb down to her, but then he catches sight of me and returns to the rafters.

Daddy and daughter in front of a monkey jungle gym. As you can see, Dags is having the time of her life!

The car Brad wishes the leasing agent gave him.

Here's hoping you all had as fun and relaxing a weekend as we did! And a final reminder from our friends at the zoo: the family that grooms ticks out of each other's hair together, stays together.